


The Ways We Choose to Survive

by walkingsaladshooter



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Character Turned Into Vampire, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 04:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17114675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkingsaladshooter/pseuds/walkingsaladshooter
Summary: "What's happening to me?"Part of his heart sinks. Part of it sparks something closer to alive. "You're a vampire now," he says. "I'm sorry."





	The Ways We Choose to Survive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Noppoh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noppoh/gifts).



He doesn't mean to turn her. He swears on everything holy and unholy he doesn't mean to turn her. He only means to feed. But when he tastes her blood, something clicks. Some yawning, empty, lonely thing in him tastes something in her and says _yes_ and _there you are_ and _it's you_. And so he doesn't stop drinking. And the next thing he knows, there's a not-quite-corpse crumpled on the floor in front of him where a girl used to be.

He kneels down and waits. No pulse beats in her neck. Then, slowly, her eyes flutter open. She looks up at him and furrows her brow. Opens her mouth to speak, and no sound comes out.

Everything is achingly familiar: the flash of fear in her eyes when she realizes she isn't breathing. The spasm of her chest when she realizes her breath won't come unless she forces it. The way her hands tremble, scramble across the pavement, before clutching at his wrists with surprising steely force. Her eyes are wide and wild when she looks up at him, awkwardly muscles a breath, and asks in a thin tone, "What's happening to me?"

Part of his heart sinks. Part of it sparks something closer to alive. "You're a vampire now," he says. "I'm sorry."

  
\----

  
He doesn't leave her there. How could he? He made her, and she's frightened, and she's new. She needs someone to show her what to do. How to be, now that she isn't, anymore. He's responsible for her.

"What's your name?" he asks, when she's stopped crying and is sitting very still, her knees pulled up to her chest and arms wrapped around her legs. She's deathly pale -- she's had nothing to drink yet -- and the wound on the side of her neck is still fresh.

"Rey," she says.

"I'm Kylo."

"Kylo." Rey says it slowly. She turns her head, also slowly, and looks at him with a piercing gaze. "Go fuck yourself."

He chews the inside of his lip. "I suppose I deserve that."

"I suppose you do."

The wall she's thrown up between them is nearly a solid thing. "You'll need to feed soon," he says. "We can go a while without feeding, but not when we're new. It's like-- like being a newborn. You're vulnerable right now."

"Can vampires die if they don't drink blood?"

That gives him pause. Both the question and the even tone in which she asks it. Like she's asking him how much the Sunday paper costs. "No. We get weaker and weaker, and then something else inevitably kills us. But we can't starve." He considers how much detail to give her, but she may as well know everything. "It's torturous, though. To not feed."

"I don't want to." She looks at him again with those fierce eyes. "I don't want to kill people."

This is always the worst part, for Kylo. The unlearning. Rey is still thinking like a human, and it's only going to keep hurting her the longer she does it.

"You don't have to kill them. You can drink a little. Enough to keep yourself upright, at least. For now." She stares at him, hard. Something inside him constricts. "Please."

  
\----

  
He does the hunting for her. Finds a healthy-looking, strong young man. Someone who will clearly bounce back from a bit of blood loss. Kylo entrances the man and brings him into the dark corner where Rey is waiting.

Her arms are wrapped so tightly around herself it's like she wants to disappear inside them. "Bite here," Kylo says, very gently, pointing to the ideal spot on the young man's neck. "Drink a little, then lick the wound. You have saliva that will clot the wound and keep him from bleeding out."

Rey's steely gaze bores straight between Kylo's eyes. Then she unwinds herself and steps forward. She's shaking all over when she leans in and carefully brings her mouth to the man's neck and carefully sinks in her teeth.

For a second, revulsion passes over her face. Then it clears into instinct, into bliss -- she's half-starved, being brand new, and the taste and feeling of blood coursing into her is the most delicious it will likely ever be. Kylo remembers the feeling. He misses the feeling.

But after a long moment, Rey pulls back, shakes her head hard, and then leans back in to lick the wound closed. She steps away, wiping her chin. There's a faint hint of glow in her cheeks, now; her skin looks three-dimensional instead of papery and opaque. "No," she says.

"No what?"

"No. I'm not going to keep doing that."

"Rey, you have to."

She shakes her head. "It's too-- it's too good. And I can feel-- something inside me. Wants to let go. Wants to hunt him and-- and then drink him dry. And I can't. I can't. I won't do it."

"You'll learn to control the hunger. And you have to feed, Rey. This is how we survive. And we may not be human anymore, but we deserve a chance to survive."

She meets his gaze, eyes flashing. "I know about surviving," she says. "I spent my whole life trying to survive. And I know there are always choices."

The taste of her blood is still on his tongue. It sings warm and sweet and hard just like her eyes. When she turns and stalks away into the night, Kylo can't help but follow her.

  
\----

  
Rey's apartment is small, a studio tucked into the top floor of an old house that's been converted into apartments. There isn't much inside, but the blankets on the bed are colorful and there's a neat line of four teacups on top of the microwave and she has plants hanging in each of her three small windows. The curtains are drawn, but they're sheer, and daylight diffuses across the apartment. It makes Kylo feel jittery and queasy when he stands in it.

"Please come out with me tonight," he says. "You're getting weak again."

Rey shakes her head. She's texting. That's what baffles him the most -- he turned her into a vampire and she just came back to her little apartment, made a cup of tea, and returned her worried friend's texts. Like nothing had happened. Like she was still human.

That she had let him in after her was a shock. But here he is, watching her curled up on the bed, shivering slightly in the pale sunlight.

"Please, Rey."

"I'm not feeding off people," she says. It's that same firm tone that tells him there's no use arguing, even though he keeps doing it anyway. "It's fine. I'm used to being hungry."

There it is again. _I spent my whole life trying to survive_ and _I'm used to being hungry_. Little bread-crumbs suggesting her human life had been hard. For some reason (perhaps the reason he turned her in the first place, the thing he tasted in her blood), it hurts him.

Kylo crosses to the bed and kneels down in front of it. Rey finally meets his gaze. "Please," he says again. He can't remember the last time he said that word so much. "It's my fault you died the first time. I don't want you to die again."

She raises her eyebrows slightly. "So I should eat people just to soothe your guilt."

But that's not it. Becase he is responsible for her, now, and he does feel guilty. But when he opens his mouth to answer, the truth comes out: "I don't like to see you hurting."

That's met with a long silence. Then Rey leans back on her pillows and tucks her knees up near her chest and looks back at her phone. "There's a butcher about half a mile from here. I can buy blood there, probably. Drink that."

"It's summer. I'd be surprised if the butcher's open past sundown this time of year."

"I thought you said we don't burst into flames in the sunlight like in the movies."

He had told her that -- when they walked back to her apartment in the last shades of the night, when she had coldly asked him clinical questions about what it meant to be a vampire, now. He also notices that she says "we" instead of "vampires," which is the first time she's done it. "No, we don't. But it makes us feel ill -- I'm sure you've noticed, even in here. And being out in full sun will have you collapsed and incoherent before you make it that half mile."

"So I'll wear long sleeves and a big hat. Enormous sunglasses. I'll tell people I'm allergic to the sun."

"Rey." Kylo tilts his head. "Are you really just going to carry on living like you're still human?"

"Why not?" She sits up straight and meets his gaze. "I'll have to find a third-shift job, obviously, but why not? Why not still live here? Why not still talk to my friends? Is there some rule that I have to go skulk in the shadows and live in an abandoned mansion or something?"

"Well, no." Kylo's hands fidget together in his lap. "But what will you tell your friends? They're bound to someday notice there's nothing but blood in your fridge."

She pauses, glancing upwards. There's a scattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. It makes him want to reach out to her, but he doesn't. He won't. He decided immediately after she was turned that, no matter how much he wants to, he won't be the one to reach out to her. He's the monster who turned her. If anyone will reach out, it has to be her.

"I really only have one real friend, to be honest. And I just might tell him." She smiles for the first time since he turned her, and Kylo had almost forgotten the dazzle of it. It's like the sun, but it doesn't make him feel sick. "If anyone would believe me, it's Finn."

And it's nonsensical. All of it is nonsensical. Kylo keeps mostly to himself, but he's never, ever known a vampire to just... carry on as though nothing had changed but a dietary requirement.

But he thinks if anyone can do it, Rey can.

"It won't be easy," he says.

"I don't imagine it will be."

He holds her gaze and softly says, "How can I help?"

  
\----

  
"Teacup or crazy straw?"

"Teacup. Please."

Rey sticks out her tongue. "You're so boring." But she pours a measure of pig's blood into a teacup for him, then some into a cup for herself, dropping in a squiggly pink straw. "Here." She hands Kylo his teacup, then sits in her chair at the tiny table -- she always tucks her feet up on the seat of the chair, curling herself up -- and sipping her blood. "Thanks for getting this. I really appreciate it."

"Of course." The butcher Rey had thought of originally wouldn't sell blood, but there's a slaughterhouse just outside town where a fair bit could be bought. Kylo had made the trek just before dawn to avoid getting ill, but then had had to wear a jacket with the hood up and large sunglasses all the way back. He still had ended up feeling unwell, but he hadn't collapsed, and his teacup of blood was already perking him up.

"I'll figure out a better arrangement soon. Finn has a car -- he might be willing to drive out. Though he's still getting used to all of this. It gives him the screaming heebie-jeebies."

"I can imagine." Another sip. It's hard to drink the blood from a cup -- straight from the vein makes it so much easier to absorb it properly, and he has to do a weird slurp-and-slosh with the cup to get it to work. Rey takes sips from her straw and then seems to swish the blood over her tongue until it absorbs right. It's much harder than drinking from a body, and it doesn't taste as good. But it rejuvenates him just as much. "He must be a good friend, to not have completely abandoned you."

Rey tilts her head. "Do you have friends? A vampire clan you run with?"

"No. I know some people, but-- no, not friends." He smirks. "Though to be fair, I didn't have many friends in life, either. I can be a bit... much."

"Really? Because aside from the whole killing me and then reanimating me as a vampire thing, you seem pretty even-keeled."

"You've only known me a week."

Rey takes another drink. Kylo watches the shadow of the blood move through the loops and spirals of the straw before getting to her mouth. When she's done, she asks, "Well, maybe you should tell me more about yourself, then. Besides the whole monster thing."

He's already thought it about himself, but hearing her call him a monster hits him hard. His fingers tighten around the teacup. "Maybe another time."

  
\----

  
A week later, when he brings another delivery of blood to Rey's apartment, she thanks him and then says, "You won't have to go anymore. Finn agreed to make runs for me."

"Oh." Kylo suddenly doesn't want to sit, but he has to. He's weak from walking back in the sun, even with his coverings.

Rey's brow furrows. "It's just-- it's a really long trek. And you shouldn't have to do all that in the sun. Thank you, though, for both times."

"Right."

He drinks his teacup of blood quietly. The silence between them has grown awkward, he knows, but he can't seem to break it, or even to exactly articulate why he's bothered. No, that's a lie. He knows why. (He wants to see her again, but now he has no excuse.) But he doesn't want to admit why.

Besides, he's not entirely sure why she's being friendly at all. In the short time he's known her, she does seem to have a deeply-ingrained sense of making the best of things. Perhaps that's all it is. It must be, because there's no other good reason for her to thank him for anything when it's his fault she's a vampire now.

Rey finally breaks the silence. "You can still come over, you know. Have your blood here with me. It's better than hunting."

"Not really."

Rey frowns.

"Vampires are supposed to hunt," he says, not looking up at her. "We're supposed to feed."

He can feel her steely gaze burning into him. When they've finished their cups of blood, she takes his in silence and puts it in the sink. Kylo stands and goes to do the door. Something in him sinks heavily as he realizes he probably won't stand in this little apartment again, and his hands fumble as he pulls up the hood of his jacket.

"You know," Rey says as she opens the door, "a vampire is what you are, not who you are."

He doesn't say anything. But he doesn't hear her close the door immediately when he leaves.

  
\----

  
He's been feeding only on tall, broad-shouldered people lately, mostly men. Because every time he considers a smaller woman, he realizes she looks like Rey, and he knows he's fucked up but he's not willing to be that fucked up.

He's drinking less each time. Just enough to sate him for a day or two. It means he has to hunt more, but it also means his victims recover better.

  
\----

  
There's an all-night diner in the area Kylo usually hunts. He's sitting in there now at two in the morning, drinking a cup of black coffee and reading a newspaper. (Solid food is a no-go for the vampire body, but small amounts of liquid tend to not cause too much of a problem, and god he misses coffee.) He skims an article about the upcoming annual Independence Day festival, held in the big park in the center of town like always. It's all carnival games and rides and food, family activities, things he has no place for in his world, now. Things where he always felt out of place even when he was alive.

But then he reads one of the last lines.

Senator Organa will deliver an address just before the fireworks show.

His fingers grip the edges of the paper. Just before the fireworks. The sun will be down by then.

If his heart still beat, it would be pounding.

  
\----

  
Spending the last ten years skulking in the shadows has left Kylo deeply unprepared for the crowds and noise and flashing colored lights of the festival. He wants to go unnoticed as he makes his way to the bandstand, but he's so tall and so large that of course people notice him. He hates it. He wants to disappear.

But he finds a spot near a tree, close to the bandstand but off to the side, where it's not too crowded. And with a heavy feeling in his chest, he waits.

The lights on the bandstand come up. A man comes out to give an introduction as the crowd finishes gathering. And then the Senator crosses to the microphone to raucous applause.

She looks older than he remembers. Smaller, too. But when she begins to speak, her voice is as strong and powerful as he remembers.

A surge of emotions rises, but they're emotions he's sorted through before. He doesn't want to unpack them all over again right now. He just wants to see her.

And then, off to his left, a bright, shiny voice calls out, "Kylo? Is that you?"

He knows it's her before he turns. But there's Rey, walking up with that dazzling smile and a cup with a lemon printed on it. She's followed by a young man that must be Finn, who looks Kylo up and down with something bordering on full-on antagonism that then softens into a less-volatile plain old distrust. "It's been almost a month," Rey says. "Where have you been?"

Kylo shrugs awkwardly. "Around."

"I told you you can still come over for-- tea." She sips her drink. The straw doesn't darken, so it probably is actually lemonade, not blood.

"Don't drink too much of that," he says evenly. "Not more than half the cup. It'll make you sick."

She smiles. "I know. I remember. But I had to have some." She's standing next to him with no move to leave, and Finn's shoulders are very square. "I come to this every year. Only at the end. The fireworks are free, and I could usually scrape up enough change for a lemonade. My one big treat." Her smile turns a little sad. "I didn't want to give it up. Not entirely."

"That doesn't surprise me."

"I'm Finn," says Finn.

"I know," says Kylo.

"Oh, shit, I'm sorry. Finn, Kylo. Kylo, Finn. But yeah, you knew that."

Rey finally falls silent, though she doesn't walk away. Kylo still doesn't know why she's here, next to him. Kylo turns his attention back to the Senator's speech, trying not to think too much about why Rey came up to him in the first place.

"We should head up the hill," Finn says. "If we want a good spot for fireworks."

"I know. Okay." Rey peers up at Kylo. "You wouldn't want to come with us, would you?"

He sees her glance from the corner of his eye, but he's still watching the stage. "No. But thank you."

"You're really into her speech, huh?"

Something in his chest constricts. Finn says something, and Rey says goodbye, and she's turning to leave when Kylo says, very softly, "She's my mother."

Rey freezes, whirling around to stare at him with wide eyes. But he doesn't meet her gaze, and Finn tugs at her hand, and she furrows her brow and heads off for a good spot for the fireworks and Kylo feels that sinking feeling inside and turns and leaves the festival, his mother's voice echoing after him even after he crosses the street.

  
\----

  
He should feed that night, but he doesn't. He wanders the streets in the dark until the sun comes up, when he finds one of his usual haunts to hide in until sundown. It takes him another two full days to even try to hunt. By then he's the kind of cranky that can easily turn bad in a hunt, so he tries tries tries to calm himself and focus himself before he goes out. He doesn't want to make it messy.

In a bar in the strip district, he finds a healthy-looking young man and entrances him and then invites him outside under the pretense of a cigarette. He brings the man into a shadowy corner and brings his fangs to the man's skin. Something inside him freezes. He can't-- he can't sink them in. He can't make himself bite.

Kylo wants to push the man away, to yell, to kick over the trash cans. He feels all of that rise inside him in a wave.

Then he closes his eyes and steps away. Something in him yawns wide open, empty and lonely, and it swallows up the anger and leaves him feeling just hollow.

The trance begins to wear off. The man shakes his head and looks around. "What--"

"Thanks for the smoke," Kylo says roughly. "Have a good night." And he stalks away, letting himself disappear into the night.

  
\----

  
Four more days pass. It's been a week since he last fed, and he's tired and weak and shaky. He tries two more times, but he can never make himself bite, no matter how warm and tempting the skin is. He watches every sunrise, thinking about a neat line of four teacups and plants hanging in small windows and lemonade at a summer festival.

It's been a very, very lonely ten years.

  
\----

  
When he knocks on the door, he has no idea if she'll answer. It's three in the morning. Maybe she tries to sleep like she used to. But after a moment, the door opens, and Rey is peering up at him quizzically. "Kylo? Where have you--"

"Ben," he says.

"I'm sorry?"

"My name. It isn't Kylo. Or it wasn't when I was alive." He takes a deep breath, an old habit he has yet to shake, as though it will still calm him. "My name was Ben."

She goes still, then tilts her head to the side. "Ben," she says, carefully, and he had no idea his own dull name could sound like something warm and welcoming. "Do you want to come in for a cup of tea?"

He feels himself smile. It feels stiff and strange, but it feels good, too. "I'd like that," he says. "I'd like that very much." And he goes inside, into Rey's warm apartment, and shuts the door behind him, closing out the night.


End file.
